(pi.sh also documents other install methods, like `npm`, on their homepage)
If trust and security is the issue, unfortunately "better" ideas like hashpipe [1] never achieved critical mass
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9318286Is it likely? No. Can it happen? Yea.
Just make it `curl -o <file> <url> && sh <file>` and this entire problem is gone.
It's plain horrible. You could have, for example, a compromised server serving malware but only one out of every 100 download. The only signature you rely on is TLS.
Proper package distribution are using proper signatures schemes, are decentralized, even for some offer reproducible builds (meaning you can rebuild the whole package yourself and verify your build matches), etc.
Hashpipe is an attempt at reproducing some of those guarantees. Not unlike container pining using hashes. It at least fixes the "Jack and John installed this already and I know I'm getting the same version as they did".
Proper software distribution is signed, reproducible and ideally also uses some proof-of-existence for the hashes.
My bet is this: in the face of the countless supply chain attacks, we'll see more and more people getting very serious about security, including the security of software distribution. And curl bash'ing won't be part of it.
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash
Oh wait (from another comment under this article): > https://pi.dev/models is throwing an internal server error for me.
It's just people who have internalized "don't paste commands from the Internet into your terminal" and aren't thinking about exactly what makes pasting commands from the Internet into your terminal dangerous, and how that applies to this specific case.
/s
Maybe security should be at a higher position on our priority list.
The careless days are ultimately over but we still don’t act like that.
oh wait...
"curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash"
(right from https://claude.com/product/claude-code)
Further - what the flicking fuck do you think an installer is going to do on your system? Not run any commands? Because I've written installers for every platform... they ALL can run commands.
So what exactly is the complaint in this comment? If you want to go read the install script - knock yourself out (or hell, point your agent at it...).
You think it's hard to obfuscate shell calls from inside a built executable?
What it tells us is that you're probably searching for reasons to grouse about AI.
So I'm sold on that level alone. Good stuff.
As far as I can tell, they tick the same boxes- but one has the support of a big boy model provider.
OpenCode is nice if you don't want to do a lot of research and just want to get started right away. The OpenCode Go plan for $5 a month for your first month is a great way to do this, with good models to choose from and reasonable usage limits for a beginner.
One caveat is that it doesn't do MCP tools, but can wire them up with bash (or use CLIs if those are available).
Try Zed[1] for GUI and pool[2] for TUI.
[1] https://zed.dev/